White Christian Apocalypse?

I have been deliberately holding off on election-related comments on matters about which I have little novel to contribute. On one critical issue, though, contemporary debate and theorizing really is trespassing on my areas of expertise.

For some 15 years now, I have been writing about the idea of the U.S. becoming a majority-minority country[1], in which no single ethnic or racial group constitutes a majority. I discussed this, for instance, in my book The Next Christendom[2], back in 2002. That idea has recently become quite standard and orthodox, and is an increasingly familiar element of political rhetoric, especially among liberals and Democrats. But at least as the idea is appearing in the media and political discourse, it is being badly misunderstood, in two critical ways. For some, these misunderstandings arise from excessive optimism; for others the flaw lies in pessimism. These points may seem stunningly obvious, but as I say, they escape a lot of otherwise informed commentators. Consciously or otherwise, observers are letting themselves be deceived by the fluid nature of American ethnic classifications.

Firstly, and obviously, “minority” is not a uniform category.

After the recent election, I saw plenty of articles saying this was the last gasp of White America before whites lost their majority status, maybe sometime around 2040. Well, 2040 is a long way off, but let us look at the projections for what the U.S. population will look like in mid-century, say in 2050. The best estimate is that non-Latino whites will make up some 47 percent of that population, Latinos 29 percent, African-Americans 15 percent, and Asians 9 percent. Allow a couple of percentage points either way.

In that situation, “whites” will indeed be a minority. But the future U.S. will be a very diverse nation, with multiple communities whose interests might coincide on some issues but not others. The fact that whites will be a minority in 2050 does not, for instance, mean that African-Americans will have unlimited latitude to achieve their goals, or that blacks can count on the reliable support of Asians and Latinos. On some issues, yes, on others, no. Just to take a specific issue, a distinctively African-American issue like reparations for slavery is presumably not going to appeal to the mass of Latino or Asian-American taxpayers any more than it presently does to old-stock whites.

I have actually talked with people who are convinced that by 2050, African-Americans will be a majority in this country. No, they won’t, not even close. Actually, the African-American share of the population will not even grow that substantially. The figure was around 12 percent in 1980, rising to 15 percent by 2050. Much of that growth reflects newer African migration, from communities that generally do not identify with African-American politics or traditions.

Also, what do we mean by “white”? Historically, the category of “whiteness” has been very flexible, gradually extending over various groups not originally included in that constituency. In the mid-19th century, the Irish were assuredly not white, but then they became so. And then the same fate eventually befell Poles and Italians, and then Jews. A great many U.S. Latinos today certainly think of themselves as white. Ask most Cubans, or Argentines, or Puerto Ricans, and a lot of Mexicans. Any discussion of “whiteness” at different points in U.S. history has to take account of those labels and definitions.

Nor are Latinos alone in this regard. In recent controversies over diversity in Silicon Valley, complaints about workplaces that are overwhelmingly “white” were actually focused on targets where a quarter or more are of Asian origin. Even firms with a great many workers from India, Taiwan, or Korea found themselves condemned for lacking true ethnic diversity. Does that not mean that Asians are in the process of achieving whiteness[3]?

Meanwhile, intermarriage proceeds apace, with a great many matches involving non-Latino whites and either Latinos or people of Asian origin. (Such unions are much more common than black-white relationships.) Anyone who expects the offspring of such matches to mobilize and rise up against White Supremacy is going to be sorely disappointed.

The second point specifically concerns the book The End of White Christian America[4], by Robert P. Jones, a work I found rewarding and provocative. But the title has been much cited and misused (not Jones’s fault!). Typically doom-laden was the Washington Post’s headline, “White Christian America Is Dying,”[5] and the takeaway for most liberals is: and good riddance.

Reading some post-election comments, it seemed as if commentators were expecting the “white Christian” population to evaporate, which it won’t do. Firstly, non-Latino whites will of course remain, and will still, at least through the 2050s, constitute by far the nation’s largest ethnic community. A 47 percent community still represents an enormous plurality. Actually, the scale of “white Christian” America will be far more substantial even than that figure might suggest, given the de facto inclusion of other groups—especially Latinos, and possibly Asians—under the ethnic umbrella. Intermarriage accelerates the expansion of whiteness.

Whites are not going away, and nor are Christians. One great effect of the 1965 Immigration Act was to expand vastly the range of ethnic groups in the U.S., who were overwhelmingly Christian in origin. That is true obviously of Mexicans, but also of Asian-Americans and Arab-Americans. New generations of Africans trend to be fiercely Christian. The American Islamic population, for instance, was and remains tiny as a proportion of the national total, and it will continue to do so.

So no, we are not looking to the end of white Christian America, nor to the passing of white Christian America. In 2050, this will be a much more diverse country religiously and ethnically. But if you are waiting for the White Christian Apocalypse, you may have the wrong millennium.

I think the left in the Obama era has honestly internalized a kind of implicit assumption that whites are already a minority. This lead to the absurd notion that whites were therefore electorally irrelevant. This ridiculous mindset caused an increase in guilting and shaming of whites among politically correct cultural elites, since it was assumed that whites were a spent political force.

We now see just where that sort of thinking has lead the left. The democrat party is in shambles at least for the next two years.

#2 Comment By KD On November 17, 2016 @ 6:36 am

I guess I don’t understand your essay.

In international relations, there is a problem known as the “security dilemma”, which occurs when two individuals encounter each other in the state of nature (outside the night watchman/state). In terms of game theory, if one presumes the other is friendly, but turns out hostile, you die. The safest course of action is to attack and murder the other before they murder you. Further, since the other can make the same calculation, they are going to figure out the same strategy, and be convinced that you are likely to be aggressive, whether you are or not. Hence, why nation-state war with each other.

The same problem emerges in an ethnically polarized nation. If you control the night watchman, but control of the night watchman will pass to another, potentially hostile, group, what do you do? Do you actively prevent the transfer of power? If you are the other group, when you assume power, don’t you fear the new minority will get mad at some point at try to take the power back? Don’t you try to weaken and disarm the new minority–which is then viewed as hostility by the new minority?

Because of the security dilemma, it is very likely that you will see ethnic polarization and conflict as we approach 2043, second, you will likely see political repression against the white former majority when the minority assumes power. This will likely trigger nice stuff like coup attempts and secessionist movements.

If you look at most countries with a white minority at independence, the nationalists liberated the whites from their property and sent them packing (Algeria, Zimbabwe). Or the whites simply got murdered like in Haitian independence. Likewise, if you look at maybe the two nations with a minority or sort of minority white population, South Africa and Brazil, they have had apartheid, dictatorship and/or white supremacist policies dictated by a white ruling elite.

The problem is not primarily demographic, or even who’s demographics, the problem is political, and the political problem is defined by the security dilemma as it applies to multi-ethnic societies. To pretend we aren’t walking into a Lebanese civil war, or military dictatorship, or Zimbabwe is to engage in a dangerous delusion.

The demographic transition of 2043 represents the greatest national security threat to the United States at this time. It presents the greatest threat to the preservation of a democratic republic with constitutional norms. It presents a great likelihood of increasing ethnic polarization, ethnic violence, and political destabilization. We are nursing and encouraging the same trends that lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

#3 Comment By JonF On November 17, 2016 @ 7:25 am

Thank you for the common sense.

#4 Comment By JonF On November 17, 2016 @ 10:09 am

Re: Because of the security dilemma, it is very likely that you will see ethnic polarization and conflict as we approach 2043, second, you will likely see political repression against the white former majority when the minority assumes power.

What “minority”? The very fact they are a minority (and their numbers will be much inferior to the white plurality) shows that they will not be “seizing power”. The author has also discussed, quite sensibly, that the non-white majority will itself be composed of divergent groups whose interests do not cohere, and may in fact lie with the white plurality (or at least some subclass of them). Comparing America in 2043– or heck, even 2543– with Zimbabwe is about as meaningful; as comparing us with Pharaohonic Egypt.
Rod Dreher on this site has been making fine hash of the silly fears of the Left over Trump– but the racialist fears of the alt-Right are every bit as bedwettingly stupid. Grow up.

#5 Comment By TomG On November 17, 2016 @ 10:29 am

As Mr. Jenkins rightly points out what it is to be white morphs as the generations pass in this most immigrant mixed of countries.

What persists beyond reason is the constant polling which seeks to neatly align data points into racial and ethnic categories. It is very misleading. I live in a conservative part of Texas and yet it is not at all unusual to see a european descended person married to a latino/indigenous descended person with their own mix of children and even adopted black or Asian children in the family as well. The combinations of coupling across racial lines is not at all rare nor is the mix of their children’s ethnicity.

Despite the narrow confines of pollsters and politicians, love trumps division time and time again. Thank God for that. It will be the thing that saves us from the dividers.

#6 Comment By AJ On November 17, 2016 @ 11:36 am

I think it has been a major mistake on the part of those who interpret the election as the triumph of white identity politics. Trump is not a racist or even a sexist, and liberals always make that charge about the Republican nominee regardless of who it is. They miss the point that many white voters who voted for Obama did in fact vote for change, not because of his ethnicity. Many of those same voters voted for Trump, for the same reason, change. Trump’s election is not about rolling back the advances of electing the first black president, it is more about a rejection of the politics and corruption of the Clinton family. I know of nobody who voted for Trump on the basis of “white identity.” Races are becoming expressed as clinal variations, the insight in this article is to show the blended areas will identify as “white.” This article makes it pretty clear then, “what’s white identity, anyway?”

#7 Comment By August J. Rush On November 17, 2016 @ 2:02 pm

Many thanks for helping me to come to grips with my people’s dispossession. It’s good to know that my children growing up in a shopping mall, and not a normal, White, Christian Nation, is *actually* a good thing.

Unfortunately for them, Brazil is the best case scenario (with South Africa or Haiti being the worst case). Non-Whites (including Jews) have a serious anti-White animus about them, and White quislings work with them at every turn.

The only question worth asking:

Would a White, Christian America be better off than our current diversity?

The answer is yes; diversity is terrible. Robert Putnam answered this question definitively for any of you that prefers scientific studies.

If The American Conservative thinks that things will be *good* for Whites in a non-White country, I suggest they go live in one as a poor person would for a month and see how it turns out. As always, the poor will suffer the most at the multiracial hands of diversity. They can’t afford gated communities & security guards to protect them.

Also, enjoy a permanent Leftist government. Because that’s what Non-Whites vote for. There is no non-White demographics that you can win over. It’s either White Nationalism, or a descent into Hell (just ask the Afrikaners). Your choice.

#8 Comment By Diogenes On November 17, 2016 @ 3:53 pm

“KD says:

November 17, 2016 at 6:36 am

I guess I don’t understand your essay.”

Based on the rest of your response, I agree that you don’t understand what Professor Jenkins is saying. He is talking about the natural assimilation of ethnic groups which were formerly viewed as “others” in American history who, over time, become party of “us”. As he points out, the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and Jews have all already undergone this process. Many Latino Whites have already undergone the process and most of the rest are doing so right now, with growing numbers of them identifying simply as “White” and with no real way to distinguish them from everyone else who identifies as white other than their names, which will overtime also cease to be identified as others. See for example Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Asians are also going through this same process. And this is all before we consider the process of intermarriage and multi-ethnic children, many of whom will simply identify as “White”.

The scenario of polarization you assume are based upon an assumption that the past examples of assimilation won’t be repeated when, in fact, assimilation is already underway.

#9 Comment By Cecil XIX On November 17, 2016 @ 5:06 pm

Spot on comment by KD.

#10 Comment By Will Harrington On November 17, 2016 @ 5:47 pm

KD

But the problem with your interpretation is that you have cherrypicked societies in which a minority suppressed and oppressed a minority to present your security dilemma as the most likely response. It simply isn’t so. Game theory can’t be applied to societies in this manner because it can’t deal with the complexity of society through time. You ignore the amount of time where close contact between ethnic groups results in trade rather than conflict, or a mixture of the two that is not simply based along ethnic lines. For example, Medieval during the viking age was a mixture of a Gaelic majority and a Norse minority. To begin with the Norse were militarily superior and they raided, colonized, traded, and intermarried. When the supposedly big ethnic blowup happened, the battle of Clontarf, it was not, as has been presented, between the Irish and the Norse. It was between Irish and Norse following the Irish Ard Ri Brian and Irish and Norse following the Norse Jarl of the Orkney Isles. Ethnic conflict was not the primary motivation in this battle.

#11 Comment By Jan Rogozinski On November 17, 2016 @ 7:18 pm

As the Rabbit said to Alice: Words mean whatever I want them to mean. I.e. there are no fixed meanings–which means no meaning at all. And, since no one knows what the other person means, words end up having no meaning at all–as Mr Jenkins demonstrates.

The word Race refers to physcial characteristic. It is a scientific fact, even though no one will admit it (something like not admitting the world is round and goes around the sun) that there are actual physical and generic differences between the three main racial groups–White, Black, Asian. Anyone can make of that what they want, but it remains a scientific fact.

Most other distinctions exist only in our heads. Such as nation, which originally meant those born (Latin natus) in a certain place. Today, a “nation” apparently is any group of people that think they are.

Similarly, patriot originally meant a lover of the patria, which is a nation that has a State. But since the US is not a nation and has no real State in the French sense of l’Etat, there are many different kinds of patriots in the USA. the word “homeland” means whatever one chooses it to mean. Take the criminal alien who owns the house next to mine. Even though he has been here for years, he says and deeply means it when he says it: “Next months I will be able to visit Colombia, MY country.” He is a Colomjbian patriot who loves Colombia but cares nothing for the USA. He would not vote here if he could if he could.

“Ethnicity” is tricky because it is both physical and mental. An ethnic group is a group of folk that has lived together in the same place for a very long time–centuries or even millennia.

Culture as anthropologists used it, meant the interconnected system of habits and beliefs belonging to a specific ethnic group or tribe.

For reasons no one has adequately explained, from the 1960s, there has been a large group of “Americans” who despite and hate White culture, White Civilization, and the White race and have an intense mental need to extirpate everything White.

Unfortunately this group controls the Democrat party and most “intellectuals,” such as college professors and clergymen, These have forced “political correctness,” which means that the words used above are used as imprecisely as Mr Jenkins uses them.

Perhaps the dimmest usage is neologisms like “African- American.” No human being can be Arican-American. There is no Arican cultgure or American culture as such, , since there are many very different ethnic groups and cultures on both contginenets. But when one puts them togetther it gets crtazier and crazier. Take Obama. He can be said to be multiratcial. But he has no ethnicity, There is nothing African about him, and he belongs to relatively small American interest gorup. He has no nation, no homeland, and no culture, in the sense in which anthropologists use tthe word.

No one can belong to more than one culture at a time. If one moves to another coutnry, one takes her culture with her and never truly adopts the culture of her new “homeland.” A univeristiy or other intituion can never be mult-cultural. By defihition, a “culture” belongs to one and onlty one tribe and or ethnic group. A multi-cultural institution is one in which no one can understand why anyone else does what they do. The various members soon hate those with a different culture from theirs–for example Black Lives Matter. Or When Hillary called White workers a “basket of deplorable,” or when Abomey laughed at White workers because their culture includes guns and religion.

The immense and fundamental differences between various races, ethnic groups, and cultures explains why a multi-national or multi-cultural nation-state is impossible and will, at best, lead to savage civil war. The only one that has held together is Switzerland–and there only since 1848.

#12 Comment By Jan Rogozinski On November 17, 2016 @ 7:32 pm

[NOTE TO EDITOR: PLEASE PRINT THIS VERSION, WITH MOST TYPOS CORRECTED.] As the Rabbit said to Alice: Words mean whatever I want them to mean. I.e. there are no fixed meanings–which means no meaning at all. And, since no one knows what the other person means, words end up having no meaning at all–as Mr Jenkins demonstrates.

The word Race refers to physical characteristic. It is a scientific fact, even though no one will admit it (something like not admitting the world is round and goes around the sun) that there are actual physical and generic differences between the three main racial groups–White, Black, Asian. Anyone can make of that what they want, but it remains a scientific fact.

Most other distinctions exist only in our heads. Such as nation, which originally meant those born (Latin natus) in a certain place. Today, a “nation” apparently is any group of people that think they are.

Similarly, patriot originally meant a lover of the patria, which is a nation that has a State. But since the US is not a nation and has no real State in the French sense of l’Etat, there are many different kinds of patriots in the USA. the word “homeland” means whatever one chooses it to mean. Take the criminal alien who owns the house next to mine. Even though he has been here for years, he says and deeply means it when he says it: “Next months I will be able to visit Colombia, MY country.” He is a Colombian patriot who loves Colombia but cares nothing for the USA. He would not vote here if he could.

“Ethnicity” is tricky because it is both physical and mental. An ethnic group is a group of folk that has lived together in the same place for a very long time–centuries or even millennia.

Culture as anthropologists used it, meant the interconnected system of habits and beliefs belonging to a specific ethnic group or tribe.

For reasons no one has adequately explained, from the 1960s, there has been a large group of “Americans” who despite and hate White culture, White Civilization, and the White race and have an intense mental need to extirpate everything White.

Unfortunately this group controls the Democrat party and most “intellectuals,” such as college professors and clergymen, These have forced “political correctness,” which means that the words used above are used as imprecisely as Mr Jenkins uses them.

Perhaps the dimmest usage is neologisms like “African- American.” No human being can be African-American. There is no African culture or American culture as such, , since there are many very different ethnic groups and cultures on both continents. But when one puts them together it gets crazier and crazier. Take Obama. He can be said to be multiracial. But he has no ethnicity, There is nothing African about him, and he belongs to relatively small American grouping. He has no nation, no homeland, and no culture, in the sense in which anthropologists use the word.

No one can belong to more than one culture at a time. If one moves to another country, one takes her culture with her and never truly adopts the culture of her new “homeland.” A university or other institution can never be multi-cultural. By definition, a “culture” belongs to one and only one tribe and or ethnic group. A multi-cultural institution is one in which no one can understand why anyone else does what they do. The various members soon hate those with a different culture from theirs–for example Black Lives Matter. Or When Hillary called White workers a “basket of deplorable,” or when Obama laughed at White workers because their culture includes guns and religion.

The immense and fundamental differences between various races, ethnic groups, and cultures explains why a multi-national or multi-cultural nation-state is impossible and will, at best, lead to savage civil war. The only one that has held together is Switzerland–and there only since 1848.

#13 Comment By Noah172 On November 17, 2016 @ 8:57 pm

This post contains a lot of stupid conventional wisdom which someone like Jenkins should be able to see through.

Historically, the category of “whiteness” has been very flexible, gradually extending over various groups not originally included in that constituency. In the mid-19th century, the Irish were assuredly not white, but then they became so. And then the same fate eventually befell Poles and Italians, and then Jews

False. These groups may have been disliked to varying degrees by native British-ancestry Protestant Americans, but they were never considered non-white in the manner of blacks and American Indians. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to “free white persons”; white persons of non-British origin, but not always non-white persons, were naturalized continuously throughout the country’s history; ergo, the Irish, et al., were considered legally white. The anti-miscegenation laws never barred unions of Anglo-Saxons and Irish, or Italians and Poles, but rather of whites (of all European national origins) and blacks. Segregation policies never stopped Irish from using the same facilities (schools, etc.) as Anglo-Saxons.

The phenomenon of white flight crosses intra-white ethnic categories: that is, Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Italians, etc., flee their neighborhoods, often rapidly, when the blacks move in, but Germans don’t flee when the neighborhood gets more Polish.

Even firms with a great many workers from India, Taiwan, or Korea found themselves condemned for lacking true ethnic diversity. Does that not mean that Asians are in the process of achieving whiteness?

No, it means that virtue-signalling white liberals are mendacious idiots who use the term “diversity” to mean “blacks and sometimes Hispanics” rather than something resembling a dictionary definition of diversity. Liberals don’t care about Harold and Kumar.

One great effect of the 1965 Immigration Act was to expand vastly the range of ethnic groups in the U.S., who were overwhelmingly Christian in origin. That is true obviously of Mexicans, but also of Asian-Americans and Arab-Americans

Jenkins, a scholar of religion, ought to be aware of in-depth survey data from Pew showing a decline in religious affiliation, especially among the young, across racial lines. Immigrants and people of color are drifting away from religious belief and practice more or less as natives and whites are.

Jenkins should also be aware that most Asians in America (“Asian” being a stupid term, BTW) do not identify as Christian. He is flat wrong about this.

While many Arab Americans are Christian, and possibly a majority, the increase in Muslim immigration in recent years has certainly reduced the Christian portion of America’s Arab diaspora. As for America’s Muslim community being “tiny,” it’s less tiny than it used to be, and unless current immigration policy is drastically altered — which as of next January 20 it very well might be! — the current 1-2% population proportion which is Muslim could grow to 5 or more… and then we are like Western Europe, whose “tiny” (<10%) Muslim populations cause some rather not-tiny problems.

#14 Comment By SmartiCat On November 17, 2016 @ 9:19 pm

@KD

In the examples you’ve mentioned where previous white minority run nations were returned to their majority populations and whites were expelled, murdered, etc, the reasons why these things occurred were because the white minority was a hostile occupying force that badly mistreated the native populations and unjustly held resources and economic systems away from the native populations. There’s a lesson in there – if whites are generally fearful of future retaliation when they are no longer in power then perhaps it would behoove them to include current minorities as much as possible in the national fabric, prosperity and institutions. Act less hostile and harmful *now*, IOW. The future may actually hinge on what happens today.

Not that I would be overly concerned of a Jim Crow II aimed at whites, or a Zimbabwe. For many reasons. As the article points out, whites will remain the largest plurality for some time and there is question about out minority-group solidarity across varying issues or even as a “coalesced” block. Of course, overt expressions of white solidarity aimed at suppressing/eliminating minority power and presence could certainly change that logic.. ahem. But so long as minorities are given access to economic and institutional power there is little reason to believe they would find a benefit in “white elimination” and/or subjugation if the system is overall working in beneficial ways for all. You’d be better off worrying about the economic security of lower class whites who may see benefit from tearing down the system that they perceive is not benefiting them – see “Trump”.

#15 Comment By Baldy On November 17, 2016 @ 9:46 pm

KD, you are right about one thing, you don’t understand his essay. He’s saying there isn’t going to be any transfer of power. Whites will still be a major plurality and other ethnic groups will likely be absorbed into the “white” category. All your examples involve white populations much smaller than what demographers are predicting for the U.S. This means that there is no security dilemma. Using Zimbabwe and Haiti as relevant to the U.S. is especially silly. Whites were never even 10% of the population in those countries at their peak. The only thing that will cause open ethnic conflict is paranoia like this that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

#16 Comment By Craig On November 18, 2016 @ 12:19 am

It is a bit odd that hispanic immigration would be considered troubling to whites from a racial perspective, since the term implies Spanish heritage, and Spain is a Christian Western European nation. But as you say, there were many other immigrant groups from Western Europe who were initially viewed with suspicion by earlier arrivals.

#17 Comment By Jake V On November 18, 2016 @ 7:36 am

The only way forward is for Christians to be true Christians. Follow Christ. Treat each individual we encounter as if he were Christ. Allow Christ to shine through our service to Him to convert the world.

#18 Comment By collin On November 18, 2016 @ 9:43 am

I think there are several issues here:

1) Why is White Christian? Why not Christian? There are lot of minority Christians so I think it better to reach out to them.
2) Yes, the white are still the majority but this Trump led identity politics will turn off a lot of minority and white voters. HRC lost because email not just Trump and it would be wise to think Obama probably would have won a third term if he was allowed. Just as the Ds trusted demographics too much, the conservative can not trust Trump’s politics too much either.
3) For WWC voters, they are expecting results on the manufacturing which is not going to happen to any large degree. Trade barriers will be costly to the economy in other ways and it takes years for factories to be built.

#19 Comment By Thrice A Viking On November 18, 2016 @ 1:28 pm

A pair of related questions for Philip Jenkins and anyone else who cares to answer. The first is, will we eventually drop the term “Hispanic” as basically equivalent to a racial category, when it’s really a linguistic one? The second query is: should we do so, regardless of whether we actually do? I’ve already presaged my notion of whether we should, I think. If not, the answer is “Yes”.

#20 Comment By KD On November 18, 2016 @ 2:41 pm

I don’t want to imply that I have some kind of answer. I do believe we are marching rapidly toward a big question mark. I don’t know what will happen anymore than anyone else does, except that we are putting our country into a high risk scenario, although high rewards to some I suppose.

#21 Comment By KD On November 18, 2016 @ 2:49 pm

I understand the arguments about assimilation.

Here is Al-Jazeerah’s take:

[7]

Even if Al-Jazeerah is wrong, the Left does seem intent on blocking any attempts to promote assimilation, and wants Balkanization.

Its hard to have the right say don’t worry, while the Left is salivating over the prospects of a new, angry permanently alienated ethnic minority to manipulate.

#22 Comment By c matt On November 18, 2016 @ 3:27 pm

The only thing that will cause open ethnic conflict is paranoia like this that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Or the paranoia of Trump haters who think he is the re-incarnation of Hitler, just like everyone with whom they disagree is a re-incarnation of Hitler. Like Collin, who is apparently so irony-impaired, he blames Trump for instigating identity politics, the very raison d’ etre of the Democratic Party. For a very good analysis of the left’s Trump Derangement Syndrome, I recommend [8]

Written by a leftist, no less. If only they could make this required reading on every college campus.

#23 Comment By Jim On November 18, 2016 @ 6:50 pm

My wife is Puerto Rican. Neither of us voted for Hillary but we were not thrilled by Trump. My high school freshman “hispanic” son was for Trump big time.

#24 Comment By SmartiCat On November 18, 2016 @ 9:29 pm

I think I’ve finally arrived at what’s been troubling me about the reassuring statements that “white” is fungible – and therefore not “racist” -in terms of being able to have assimilated Southern Europeans, Irish, Eastern Europeans, Jews, and now some “white” Hispanics. It’s that it seems it’s always set against “Black”. When will Blacks ever get to be “White” in this society in terms of full acceptance, visibility and “default” setting treatment?

It seems to me that the categorization of “white” has little to do with ethnic pride – as many of its promoters argue – but as a class organization in which the goal is to exclude the historic “anti-white” category that is African American. So can we set aside all the nice-sounding BS about “white pride” and “white identity” as being somehow an ethnic/historic cohort when as this article, and many of the posts, demonstrate “whiteness” is clearly not about a common ethnic/cultural heritage but an exclusionary “club” defined by having a spectrum lighter of skin pigment and facial feature similarity that can “mesh” into existing definitions of “whiteness” without making it “black”, which I guess, puts it back into the long suspected category of “racism”.

#25 Comment By Optatus Cleary On November 18, 2016 @ 10:57 pm

As a teacher in a mostly Hispanic school, I can say the vast majority of my students are genetically what we would call “white.” They usually have dark hair, but it ranges as light as (natural) blonde and red. They usually have brown eyes, but this ranges as light as blue and green. Almost all would fit in fine, visually, in Italy. Most would fit in in France. Some would fit in in Ireland. There certainly are some with heavy Native American ancestry, and even some with evident sub-Saharan African ancestry.

None identify as white. Most believe that “Mexican” is a race unto itself. They are listed as “white” in the school’s documents because Mexicans have typically been considered white in American law. But this is emphatically not how they see themselves.

Intriguingly, I am also non-white in their eyes. They often ask me “what I am” and when I tell them I have Irish, German, and Czech ancestry, they remove me from the “white” category altogether. “White” is simply “what you are if you’re nothing,” and knowing the slightest thing about your ancestry “elevates” you into the non-white category.

#26 Comment By JonF On November 19, 2016 @ 10:28 am

Craig,

The Spanish even in Europe were always a bit suspect as not being “real” Europeans– hence the Black Legend, and Napoleon’s sarcasm that Europe ends at the Pyrenees. (and from an Anglo-Protestant perspective Catholic Spain was highly suspect for religious reasons).
Also, many (not all) Hispanic people have substantial Native American ancestry. This is something we white American are quite schizoid about nowadays. If we ourselves have, or think we may have, a Native ancestor buried in the family tree, we consider it worth bragging about. But in Hispanic immigrants the same Native strain troubles us.

#27 Comment By PAXNOW On November 21, 2016 @ 8:22 am

Defection from being a hard line liberal is a natural push back against the doctrinaire and uncompromising dogma of deep blue immersion. Liberalism to be enforced has invented its own inquisition aka ostracizing. Unswerving allegiance is ensured by character assassination and economic deprivation. A true- blue liberal believes in a disorderly and chaotic immigration policy (sanctuary cities), the discounting of Christmas, self-defined and self-serving diversity uber alles, countries without borders, rule by a few hidden insiders, and most of all a compliant 4th Estate. This is why Trump emerged. He will, unfortunately, adapt a blue mantle of political convenience when it comes to irrational wars on people we do not know, and who were former non-enemies. The spirit of the Trump revolution will dissolve as quickly as it emerged. The usual insiders are prevailing as we speak. True equalitarianism (basically), as envisioned in the Constitution, will seek refuge in the non-mainstream outlets. Probably to little avail. The Tsunami of self-defined political correctness has engulfed us forever?

#28 Comment By Mike C On November 22, 2016 @ 5:38 pm

This developing danger to the American Republic can be stopped by permanently cutting off turd world immigration, sending the bulk of the last 30 years of unneeded/unwanted by Americans migrants back to their place of origin- moslems, Mex and Indians in particular and doing whatever it takes to increase the White American birth rate. It would be a plus also to encourage immigration by non-socialist White Canadians, Europeans and South Africans.

#29 Comment By Dr. Diprospan On November 27, 2016 @ 9:21 am

Interesting article, Mr. Jenkins, thank you.
It seemed to me that from a certain historical moment white skin for people became a symbol of the possibility to avoid heavy physical labor. People have noticed that the skin becomes lighter, if the person is under the protection of the roofs of houses and walls of towns. But people can live there, if they have the knowledge to build a building, and to provide life activity of town. Since Homo sapiens prosperity depends to a large extent on the efficiency of the brain, so people began to associate skin color and intelligence.
Once this association appeared, people began to carry out a targeted selection to strengthen and consolidate this feature.
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks were dark-skinned by nature, but the white skin was considered very beautiful and attractive. Pale skin was considered a sign of a noble family, while dark skin pointed to a simple, rural origins.
It is obvious that the upper class could not and did not want to practice a religion in the same way as ordinary tanned peasants did it. Is not this is the cause of incessant religious transformations?
But the real flourishing of fashion on a white porcelain skin began with the 16 – 18 centuries. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, with pale skin by nature, introduced the fashion of aristocratic pallor. Elizabeth and noble ladies who imitated her painted on their faces blue veins, for which reason, the skin appeared especially white and transparent. Veins on the skin of the common people with dark skin are not visible, while the veins were expressive blue color against a white skin of the representatives of the royal and noble families. It formed an idea of the nobility as “a blue blood people”.
Do not people have lost something important in the pursuit of white skin?
The pigment melanin ( insoluble polymers, the products of oxidative transformations of amino acid tyrosine) determines the color of skin, hair and iris. Melanin absorbs ultraviolet rays, and thus it protects the skin from burns, radiation damage, cancer transformation: [9]
Melanin neutralizes free radicals and is the most powerful antioxidant. It is localized around the nuclei of cells and protects against damage genetic information.
Melanin is a sorbent for radionuclides such as uranium. This substance is also taking part in the work of the central nervous system.
Meanwhile white people are migrating from the equator towards the poles of the planet looking for protection from solar radiation. Since there are a lot of cool places in the world: Canada, Siberia, Antarctica, Greenland the apocalypse of the white man will not come tomorrow.

Article printed from
The American Conservative:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com

[6] The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels: https://www.amazon.com/The-Many-Faces-Christ-Thousand-Year/dp/0465066925/ref=as_sl_pc_ss_til?tag=theamericonse-20&linkCode=w01&linkId=AX253YM5HG3J6BEM&creativeASIN=0465066925